ty” (Coughlan 91). The statue acquired this meaning by the way Michelangelo depicted this biblical character. Instead of presenting us with the winner of the battle, with the giant’s head at his feet and a sword in his hand like Donatello did many years before, he portrays David right before the battle begins. David is in the moment where his people are hesitating and Goliath is mocking him. He is placed in perfect contrapusto; in the same manner the Greeks represented their heroes (Heusinger 17). The right-hand side of the figure is composed, “while the left side, from the outstretched foot all the way up to the disheveled hair, is openly active and dynamic” (Heusinger 18). Frederick Hartt does an excellent job of describing the essence of the statue:“Throughout the statue, but especially in the head, the conflict between line and form… …is intensified and deepened. The features are more deeply undercut than in any of the earlier works, possibly because of the height from which the statue was originally intended to be seen. …The enormous eyes …seem at once liquid and fiery. The flat planes joining at determined angles underlie all the construction of the David, not only in the squared-off masses of the features but throughout the knotty, bony, sinewy, half- developed, and unprecedentedly beautiful torso and legs. For the first time Michelangelo is able to embody in the quality of a single human body all the passionate drama of a man’s inner nature. The sinews of the neck seem to tense and relax, the veins of the neck, hands and wrists to fill, the nostrils to pinch, the belly muscles to contract and the chest to lift with the intake of breath, the nipples to shrink and erect, the whole proud being to quiver like a war horse that smells the battle. But the nature of the battle there is no indication whatever; it is eternal and in every man” (Hartt 112).Once th...
